Xcarve

[Neale]

Well, sticking my neck out and risking being laughed out of the forum, if you think you would be happy with a toy, why not build one? I say this in all seriousness - my first router was built in a hurry because I had promised someone that I would make a presentation plaque and then needed to make a machine to make it.

That machine was to the JGRO design. There's plenty of information and build logs available on the internet, and the design is available free. Basic structure comes from 8x4 sheets of MDF, one 3/4 and one 1/2 (or as I had to, metric equivalents). Leadscrews and guide rails are cheap and crude but easy to make. I bought motors, drivers, and a spindle that were a bit OTT for the job but I had the intention of carrying them forwards to a later machine (which, more or less, has happened).

The machine was crap. MDF has all the structural integrity of cold-rolled cow dung; it moves with temperature change, humidity change, if there's an R in the month, and whenever it feels like it. The guide rails needed frequent adjustment and I ended up shimming the Z plate to try to keep the spindle vertical on a warping MDF panel. On the other hand, I used that machine for a whole range of jobs for about 3 years - the original plaque, now on display in a French village, it cut 25mm teak curved profiles for some bits for my boat (slowly, but it did the job) and a heap of intersecting ply panels for my son's architecture degree project. And a bunch of other things in between. It has been replaced with a steel-frame machine of greater capacity, speed, and accuracy, but that first machine cost me relatively little and taught me a lot.

Just a thought, and somewhat against the usual, "do it once, do it right" approach.